Jane Austen's Uncensored Rebellion: the Juvenilia

JANE AUSTEN’S UNCENSORED REBELLION: THE JUVENILIA

A Thesis

Presented to the faculty of the Department of English

California State University, Sacramento

Submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

English

(Literature)

Michelle Yvette Linney

FALL 2018

Michelle Yvette Linney

JANE AUSTEN’S UNCENSORED REBELLION: THE JUVENILIA

A Thesis

Michelle Yvette Linney

Approved by:

______, Committee Chair Dr. Jonas Seth Cope

______, Second Reader Dr. Susan Wanlass

______Date

iii

Student: Michelle Yvette Linney

I certify that this student has met the requirements for format contained in the University format manual, and that this thesis is suitable for shelving in the Library and credit is to be awarded for the thesis.

______, Graduate Coordinator ______Department Chair Date

Department of English

Abstract

JANE AUSTEN’S UNCENSORED REBELLION: THE JUVENILIA

Michelle Yvette Linney

Jane Austen’s juvenilia was preserved in three vellum notebooks, which contain

final drafts of over twenty short stories, plays, letters, and scraps written between 1787

and 1793. As such, they offer a rare glimpse at the development of the aspiring young

writer, documenting the evolution of Austen’s early writing style. The stories are

burlesques of traditional themes from eighteenth-century literature, offering Austen’s

readers her humorous perspective on the limiting conventions reinforced in popular

novels and conduct books. While Austen loved reading novels, she was critical of depictions of sentimentalism and mocked the excessive emotion depicted in her favorite novels. This thesis provides an analysis of a sampling of stories from each of the three notebooks, including “Jack & Alice” from Volume the First, “Lesley Castle” from

Volume the Second, and “Evelyn” from Volume the Third. Throughout my thesis I highlight allusions to numerous novels that appear in the juvenilia, suggesting that while

Austen was a great lover of the novel, she was critical of the portrayals of men and women in popular literature. Ultimately, this essay will demonstrate that while the juvenilia is humorous on its surface, it reflects the anxiety and frustration Austen experienced as a young woman. Furthermore, because the stories were written for a

private audience of close family and friends, who shared her disdain for sentimentality, v

the juvenilia represent Austen’s contribution to the criticism of novels and the societal

limitations they reinforced. Through this lens, we can read Austen’s juvenilia as an

uncensored rebellion against the limitations she experienced as a young woman both

through the novels she loved and in her daily life.

______, Committee Chair Dr. Jonas Seth Cope

______Date

TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Chapter

1. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

2. VOLUME THE FIRST: “JACK & ALICE” ...... 8

3. VOLUME THE SECOND: “LESLEY CASTLE” ...... 31

4. VOLUME THE THIRD: “EVELYN” ...... 51

5. CONCLUSION ...... 66

Works Cited ...... 68

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1 INTRODUCTION

Jane Austen began writing at a young age, the most polished of her early writings

making it into three vellum notebooks her father purchased for her in a show of support

of his daughter's early literary talents. These notebooks are not the spontaneous

scribblings of a young girl, but the painstakingly preserved final drafts of over twenty

short stories, plays, letters, and scraps written between 1787 and 1793. As such, they

offer a rare glimpse at the development of the aspiring writer, documenting the evolution

of Austen’s early writing style. It is clear from the worn condition of the notebooks that

they were well-loved by Austen and likely circulated among the family. It appears that

Austen continued to revise the notebooks throughout her life and may have encouraged

her niece and nephew to contribute to unfinished pieces, permitting them to write in the

notebooks (Kelley 17). After the last entry of the vellum notebooks, Austen’s literary

progress is harder to trace. There is evidence that Austen began work on three of her

mature novels while living in the family’s Steventon home, and before the family moved

to Bath in 1801. The first was a version of Northanger Abbey, which was likely written

in 1794 and sold to the publisher Crosby and Son of London in 1803 under the title Susan

(Le Faye xx-xxiv). However, Austen bought Susan back after Crosby refused to publish it (Kelley 37). Northanger Abbey is filled with echoes of the satirical voice heard in the vellum notebooks and is the first work Austen felt was ready for publication. Austen likely began work on Sense and Sensibility in 1795, under the working title Elinor and

Marianne, and a version of Pride and Prejudice was begun in 1796 and completed in

1797. Austen’s father attempted to sell the latter to Thomas Cadell in 1797 but was

2 unsuccessful (Le Faye 104). Of all the mature novels, Northanger Abbey most closely resembles the early rambunctious writings of the vellum notebooks, but despite its echoes of young Austen, it is a dramatic departure from the absurd antics of the juvenilia, especially the violent follies of the first volume.

The vellum notebooks also provide insight into Austen’s early literary tastes through the varied allusions she weaves into her stories. John McAleer asserts that the young author was “addicted to novels – novels of all kinds” (29), and her “deflationary burlesques of contemporary novelists” provide “overwhelming evidence that Jane Austen was early an omnivorous reader” (9). Austen herself declared that she and her family were “great Novel-readers and not ashamed of being so” (qtd. in Kaplan 75). For the

Austens, literature was a family affair, and the young author was encouraged to create and share her stories, which she dedicated to the family and friends who made up her intimate audience. Austen pulled inspiration from the novels she read, and the notebooks are filled with popular literary conventions that would have been familiar to her primary audience. However, Austen turns these conventions on their head, creating hysterical burlesques of popular novels. In doing so, she calls out the hypocrisy of the oppressive patriarchal world in which she lived. Austen explores the popular marriage trope of sentimental fiction in most of her early stories, re-working the common plot to illustrate the limited opportunities for women and the violence that emerges between women as a result. Austen parodied popular novelists like Fanny Burney, Henry Fielding, Samuel

Richardson, and Mrs. Radcliffe, all of whom the Austens would have read. According to

Laurie Kaplan, Austen was “confident of her family’s ability to connect the general and

the specific and to trace her allusions,” and she used these references to “lead her

audience into traps resulting from their own reading experience” (77). Kaplan further

suggests that by burlesquing popular literature, Austen was imposing “her own realistic

view of how literature should mirror life” (76). Brian Southam agrees that Austen’s home

life “was the perfect breeding ground for literary talent of a witty and critical bent,” as the

family amused themselves with reading, writing, and amateur theatricals (248). The

Austen family favored plays that mocked sentimentalism and her brothers were fond of

“serious moral arguments leveled against sentimental fiction” (248). Therefore, it is no surprise that the young author filled her vellum notebooks with caustic burlesques of sentimental novels. Claudia L. Johnson suggests that “the juvenilia are devoted almost exclusively to exploring and exposing the agendas of fictional conventions, some of which are manifestly and some implicitly political” (46). Seen through this lens, we can read the juvenilia as an early feminist critique of society, and not as mere replications of the novels she read.

However, Austen’s parodies should not be seen as criticism of the novel itself, but some of the social conventions it reinforces. Austen clearly loved the novel, and it is clear she was well versed in sentimental fiction, as evidenced by her ability to recreate plot lines and themes from the popular sentimental novels of her day. She also pays tribute to the novel in her first mature novel, Northanger Abbey, specifically honoring two of her favorite authors, Frances Burney and Maria Edgeworth. Along with popular romances,

Austen also enjoyed satirical works by Henry Fielding and Jonathan Swift. In fact, many of her earliest stories sounds more like Swift and Fielding than the female authors she

admired, despite her brother Henry’s claim that she never ranked Fielding quite so high

as Richardson on moral grounds (H. Austen 194). Biographers disagree on Austen’s

comfort level with Fielding, but it appears she was likely not as squeamish about Fielding

as her brother would have us believe, given her admiration for other salacious novels,

including Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda (1801), which she applauds in Northanger Abbey.

Austen references Tom Jones in Northanger Abbey, too, when John Thorpe, the greatest

blockhead in the novel, claims that, “Novels are so full of nonsense and stuff; there has not been a tolerably decent one come out since Tom Jones” (31). While Austen’s earliest stories echo Fielding, her later work has a more nuanced style that suggests the influence of Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote (1752). According to Margaret Anne Doody,

Austen’s early writing reflects the “experimentation and boldness of the 1790s” and belongs “not only to her youthful life but to a revolutionary decade” (118). Doody

contends that by the time Sense and Sensibility was published in 1811, there was much

less room for blatant satire (118). The evolution of Austen’s early writing is felt most

significantly in Volume the Third, with the novel “Catherine, or the Bower,” which

abandons the antics of the early work for a much more refined narrative. However, this

paper will focus primarily on examples of Austen’s blatant satire in order to capture the

young author’s uncensored criticisms of Regency life.

Some critics have been unduly harsh when discussing Austen’s juvenilia.

Austen’s own nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh described the stories as “slight and flimsy … and generally intended to be nonsensical” (qtd in Litz 2), and some modern critics agree. John Halperin claims that “the juvenilia are precocious and sometimes

amusing but they are by no means brilliant, as those who view them with passionate

hindsight like to make out – nor are they more than intermittently entertaining” (30).

Nevertheless, many critics recognize the juvenilia as early political commentary from one of the most influential authors in history and suggest that the juvenilia demonstrate the

author’s ability to see beyond the trappings of romance novels and into the heart of a

society that offered limited opportunities to women. Additionally, I would argue that the

politics of Austen’s juvenilia provide an entirely new perspective on the mature novels.

There are numerous examples of characters and storylines in the juvenilia that are re- purposed in the mature novels, suggesting that Austen continued to feel an attachment for her early ideas. Throughout this thesis, I will point out characters and themes that appear first in the juvenilia in their primitive form and again in Austen’s published work in a more polished state.

This essay will explore excerpts from Austen’s three vellum notebooks, highlighting both the literature that likely influenced her and the evolution of the author’s own work from juvenilia to published novels. I have dedicated a chapter to each of the vellum notebooks to demonstrate the progression of Austen’s style. Volume the First contains Austen’s earliest “novels,” and I will concentrate on “Jack & Alice,” a delightful nine-chapter novel that employs narrative framing to introduce numerous story lines within the relatively short novel. Austen incorporates allusions to Samuel Richardson’s

The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753), Frances Burney’s Cecilia (1782), and

Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote (1750) in this early work, infusing her story with playful nods to these popular works in a way that feels like an inside joke with her

6 readers. “Jack & Alice” includes entertaining novelistic tropes of the day, such as the masquerade and the wanderer, which in other hands would results in intrigue, sexuality, and adventure, but in this story only hint at the same. While “Jack & Alice” is hysterical in its absurdity, it contains a shocking quantity of violence, most significantly girl-on-girl violence, demonstrating the dangers of a society that forces women to compete for men’s attention.

Volume the Second settles into a slightly more restrained mockery of the sentimental novel with the two epistolary novels “Love and Freindship” and “Lesley

Castle.” I will focus primarily on “Lesley Castle,” which is written in the epistolary style, lending itself perfectly to Austen’s love of gossip and biting sarcasm. “Lesley Castle” mocks the sentimentality of popular epistolary novels such as Samuel Richardson’s

Pamela, or Virtue Rewarded (1740), which many critics consider the first modern novel,

Richardson’s The History of Sir Charles Grandison (1753), and Johann Wolfgang von

Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774). The story explores the complexities of female relationships through the intimate form of personal correspondence. The letters offer an insightful commentary on the desperate sense of isolation and confinement experienced by the young women, but these are not the sentimental reflections of fair maidens found in popular epistolary novels of Austen’s day. Instead, the correspondence in “Lesley Castle” gives voice to spiteful rantings, ugly gossip, and malicious insults that reflect the pent-up rage of the women.

Volume the Third includes two stories, “Evelyn” and “Catherine, or the Bower,” and while Austen puts the overtly mocking style of her early work aside for “Catherine,”

“Evelyn” retains the sardonic ridicule of the sentimental novel. I will focus primarily on

“Evelyn,” a charmingly funny short story about a hero whose narcissism exceeds that of

Goethe’s Young Werther. Evelyn continues the theme of female subjugation for the benefit of the patriarchy but takes it further by suggesting the system is also harmful to men. “Evelyn” feels very much like a burlesque of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young

Werther and is probably the most critical of excessive sentimentalism in men.

The juvenilia are burlesques of the literature Austen was exposed to, but they also offer an uncensored critique of the limiting conventions they supported. Austen’s early

stories are humorous in their absurdity but attack the limitations placed on her gender. I

would argue that because the juvenilia were written for a very specific and intimate

audience, Austen was free to express the anxiety and frustration she felt as a young

woman. Through her rambunctious and often violent satires, she rebels against the

conformity recommended by popular sentimental fiction with uncensored aggression.

2 VOLUME THE FIRST: “JACK & ALICE”

“Jack & Alice” is the second entry in the vellum notebooks and embodies the

unrestrained violence of Austen’s early satires. The entry is not dated, but it is dedicated

to Austen’s fifth brother, “Francis William Austen Esqr Midshipman on board his

Majesty’s Ship the Perseverance” (Austen, Juvenilia 13). Francis served as a midshipman

in the East Indies from December 1789 to November 1791, suggesting that the story was

written during that timeframe (Sabor 382). Jane would have been fourteen or fifteen at the time. “Jack & Alice” is an ambitious undertaking, containing nine chapters, a masquerade, a brief adventure into nature, a trip to Bath, and several deaths. While the chapters do not necessarily transition seamlessly, they do offer insight into the types of literature Austen would have enjoyed. The masquerade, for example was a popular plot in eighteenth century, and Austen’s numerous allusions to novels like Sir Charles

Grandison suggest early inspirations for character development. At the heart of “Jack &

Alice” is one of my favorite characters in the juvenilia, the anti-heroine, Alice, who suffers from an addiction to “the Bottle and the Dice” (Austen, Juvenilia 14). She is a young woman, who without the benefit of beauty or charm must face the harsh reality of her limited opportunities. Alice is an early ancestor of the heroines in Austen’s published novels; however, she bears little resemblance to the refined ladies who find themselves married at a novel’s end. Instead, like Catherine Moreland, “no one who had ever seen

[her] in her infancy, would have supposed her born to be a heroine. Her situation in life, the character of her father and mother, her own person and disposition, were all equally against her” (Austen, Northanger Abbey 5). Nevertheless, Alice is the heart and soul of

the story, offering a non-sentimental interpretation of a young woman ill-suited for the marriage game. Alice’s mere survival is heroic, considering the fates of other less fortunate characters, but more importantly she offers a stark contrast to the other women in the story, who are burlesqued interpretations of female characters from sentimental novels. Through her “friendships” with other women, we recognize her inability to conform to the model of a proper women as depicted, for instance, eighteenth-century female conduct books. Furthermore, these friendships reflect the self-absorbed nature of each woman as she pursues her personal ambitions to become a wife.

This chapter will explore the possible insinuations Austen is making about

literature and society in “Jack & Alice,” beginning with a brief survey of what critics

have to say about the intentionality of Austen’s early writings, followed by a closer look

at the popular literary themes and allusions in the story. Finally, I will demonstrate how

Alice’s adventures in the story suggest Austen’s criticism of popular fiction as part of a much larger critique of societal expectations for women.

Critics are divided regarding the intentionality of the early juvenilia. The first

camp suggests that the early pieces, including “Jack & Alice,” are merely burlesques of

popular novels, while another group maintains that they illustrate Austen’s early social

awareness and astute feminist expression. John McAleer represents the first camp and

argues that the “earlier pieces of the juvenilia, mostly concerned as they were with books

rather than life, made only a limited call on Jane Austen’s potential,” adding that it is not

until the later juvenilia that Austen directs her “considerable powers of ridicule into

experiments of social criticism” (18). Julia L. Epstein agrees, suggesting the juvenilia

progresses “from simple burlesque to acrid social criticism … that becomes more and

more biting as Austen’s ironic powers evolve” (qtd. in McAleer 18). Meanwhile, many

other critics argue that Austen’s early works demonstrate an astute social awareness and

that her burlesques are not so much a criticism of the novel or specific authors but of the

social inequity they reinforce. Joan Rees suggests that the juvenilia attests to “the

unusually early emergence of her critical faculty” (qtd. in McAleer 13), and even

McAleer agrees that the early pieces attest to her “early allegiance to moral, social, and

ideological assumption central to her mature works” (13). Gilbert and Gubar argue that

throughout the juvenilia Austen “ridicules the idea, promulgated by romantic fiction, that

the only events worth recording are marriage proposals, marriage ceremonies,

engagements made or broken, preparations for dances where lovers are expected,

amatory disappointments, and elopements,” but suggest that Austen’s silence on other

subjects “testify to her deprivation as a woman writer” and offer an expression of “her

alienation from equally inadequate societal strictures” (126-127). John Halperin offers a slightly more nuanced argument, suggesting that “the earliest of the juvenilia … is largely literary satire” and that “the later juvenilia (roughly 1791-93) largely social comedy”

(29). Halperin differentiates satire from comedy, arguing that “there is a lot of hostility in satire” and “to write in the satirical vein demands a certain detachment, a moral distancing” and “a cold-blooded assessment of aesthetic and moral values” (30). This statement suggests that Halperin recognizes Austen’s hostility, but his argument seems to apply only to Austen’s use of wit to expose “the false values and absurd conventions of sentimental fiction and the general flaws of bad writing,” rather than her criticism of

society at large (31). Halperin acknowledges that Austen would have been “aware early

of the mercenary nature of many marriages,” but suggests that she merely “makes fun of

them … and of the roles vanity, desire for position, fear of being an old maid, and the

wish to shine at others’ expense” (35). Alternatively, Johnson observes that at first glance

the juvenilia appears comic, but “upon a second and closer examination seems all-too- serious, and all the funnier for being so” (52). In this sense, Johnson allows Austen to be both deliberately funny and intentionally critical without diminishing the juvenilia as merely silly or nonsensical. Like Johnson, I am of the opinion that Austen used humor to criticize the restrictions women encountered in eighteenth-century society.

“Jack & Alice” is a beautiful example Austen’s social awareness and the intentional decisions she makes to criticize the repressive system in which she herself existed. To suggest the story is a simple burlesque of popular fiction is to miss the vulnerability behind the scathing criticism of the many social ills enumerated throughout the story. Of paramount importance to Austen was the materialism of marriage and the undignified “education” of women, which lacked any real purpose other than to ornament a lady with skills useless to her “survival” in the realest sense of the word. Instead, a traditionally feminine education kept a woman pre-occupied with developing skills that would be judged not necessarily by future husbands but by women in power who would either endorse a woman as marriageable or place her outside the realm of marriageability.

Austen brilliantly illustrates this point in “Jack & Alice” as Lucy, a tailor’s daughter, describes her education, which has made her unsuitable for marriage in her social station.

Furthermore, what emerges as the true evil of the marriage game is the intense hatred and

12 rivalry that exists between women as a by-product of a system that encourages women to compete for the honor of being chosen by a man no matter how reprehensible his character. Gilbert and Gubar suggest that Austen’s juvenilia “ridicules the easy violence that embellishes melodrama, even as she explores hostility between young women who feel they have no alternative but to compete on the marriage market” (126). The competition depicted in the juvenilia demonstrates the buried hostility between women that gnaws at the hearts of the women and destroys the less fortunate competitors with bitter envy, reckless gambles, and the nullifying effects of alcohol as represented in “Jack

& Alice.” This is not a mere burlesque but a scathing critique of a game that Austen herself appears not to have spent much time playing.

“Jack & Alice” is one of Austen’s longer entries, containing nine moderately developed chapters that jump from one story to another. Kaplan suggests that Austen’s more amusing pieces of Juvenilia are the longer entries, “for Jane Austen’s subtle method of character development profits from the character’s repeated interaction with the elements of the plot” (77). This holds true for “Jack & Alice,” as the convoluted plot exaggerates the deficiencies of its anti-heroine and provides numerous opportunities to illustrate her failures as a potential wife. The story also explores the complexities and dangers of female friendships.

The title of “Jack & Alice” is taken from the “hero” of the story, Jack, who does not appear until Chapter the Seventh, and his sister Alice, the anti-heroine at the center of the story. Names are of particular significance to Austen, acting not only as inside jokes with her audience but providing ready-made character templates. The tragic Alice may

13 have been named for Alice Leigh, one of Austen’s unfortunate ancestresses. Poor Alice

Leigh, whose story reads like an entry in Volume One of Austen’s juvenilia, married

Robert Dudley, the son of Earl of Leicester, only to be abandoned by Dudley when he ran off with his mistress Elizabeth, who was disguised as his page (Doody, Jane Austen’s

Names 35). Austen does not tell Ms. Leigh’s story in “Jack & Alice”, instead, she creates an anti-heroine, who is unlucky in love, possessing neither the beauty, charm or vulnerability of traditional heroines. Moreover, Alice lacks the sentimental advantage of being an orphan; in fact, both of her parents are living at the beginning of the story, and

Alice’s family has many good qualities despite being “a little addicted to the Bottle and the Dice,” afflictions that further complicate Alice’s heroine status (Austen, Juvenilia 14).

Alice belongs to the class of character that would typically be mocked or ignored in a sentimental novel, but here Austen places her at the center of the action.

It is possible that Austen herself felt like an unconventional heroine in her own life. In the summer of 1788, the Austens took a holiday to Kent where they met up with

Phila Walter, a cousin, who conveyed in a letter to cousin Eliza Hancock that she found

Jane “whimsical and affected,” “not at all pretty,” and “very much like her brother

Henry” (Tomalin 62). By contrast, Phila found Cassandra to be “pretty, sensible, and pleasing” (62). Cassandra also had the advantage of being a few years older and the particular favorite of the Cooper family, among whom were Mrs. Austen’s sister, who frequently invited Cassandra to accompany them to Bath, while Jane was left at home

(35). This detail finds its way into “Jack & Alice” when the beautiful Lucy is invited to accompany the Simpson sisters to Bath, while Alice is left in Pammydiddle. Austen

would explore the unconventional heroine more fully in Northanger Abbey, suggesting of

her heroine in that novel that “it was not very wonderful that Catherine, who had by

nature nothing heroic about her, should prefer cricket, base ball, riding on horseback, and

running about the country at the age of fourteen” (7). Austen herself was sent away to

school at an early age because her mother feared the young girl would become “wild and

out of control” among her brothers and the other male boarders who attended the Austen

family school (36). Thus, it is feasible to suggest that some of Austen’s animus towards

the traditional heroine comes from her own inability to conform to the restrictive constraints of the mold.

“Jack & Alice” opens with a “once upon a time” beginning (Austen, Juvenilia

13), suggesting that what is about to unfold will contain elements of a fairy tale,

including a vulnerable heroine, a beast, and a hero. However, Austen turns all such

expectations upside-down, providing a drunkard for the heroine, a widow for the beast,

and narcissistic gentlemen for the hero, who fails to rescue the heroine but instead

marries the beast. The story begins with a masquerade, which would typically imply

intrigue of a sexually dubious nature, but in “Jack & Alice,” Austen uses the masquerade

for different purposes. Likely inspired by masquerade storylines found in popular

literature, Austen uses the masquerade to assemble the cast of characters and assign their

archetypal roles.

The masquerade was a common trope in eighteenth-century literature, following

the popularity of the “masked assemblies” made fashionable in London (Castle 904).

According to Terry Castle, masquerades were “the site par excellence for sexual

transgression,” with masks providing anonymity and safe cover for women to share the

“sensual ‘freedom’ of men” (904). In literature, “the masquerade scene disrupts

stereotypical distinctions, such as those between paragons and knaves, the virtuous and

the vicious … intensifying the reader’s sense of didactic confusion” (910-911). The masquerade is most obviously associated with mystery and intrigue, but it also provides unique opportunities for an author to reveal hidden truths about a character. Rich in symbolism, the costumes at a masquerade have their roots deep in literary traditions, providing an occasion for authors to shroud their characters in mythical qualities associated with the likes of Greek gods and goddesses, Christian devils, and exotic sultans and sultanas. However, the reader should avoid assuming that the author is assigning those qualities to the character, as it is often revealed that the costume is meant to disguise the true identity of the individual; gods are really devils and vice versa.

Austen would have encountered the masquerade trope in some of her favorite novels, including Tom Jones (1749), Cecilia (1782), and Belinda (1801). In Tom Jones,

Fielding hints at the impropriety of the masquerade when Mrs. Miller refuses to let her daughter Nancy attend one, explaining that

she did not conceive the harm which some people imagined in a

masquerade; but that such extravagant diversions were proper only for

persons of quality and fortune, and not for young women who were to get

their living, and could, at best, hope to be married to a good tradesman.

(620)

Mrs. Miller’s statement is a comment on the importance of virtue for young ladies not in

16 possession of their own fortunes, since as a scandal resulting from a young lady’s attendance at a masquerade could ruin her chances of making a good marriage. Similarly,

Frances Burney employs the masquerade trope in Cecilia to emphasize her heroine’s extreme innocence and virtue. Cecilia is dismayed at the wanton accumulation of unnecessary debt required to throw a 500-ticket ball (103), and so unfamiliar with masquerades, having never attended one, that she shows up to the masquerade without a costume (106). Metaphorically, Cecilia’s virtuous nature is undisguised. During the masquerade, Cecilia is approached by the masked guests with the “customary enquiry of Do you know me? and a few passing compliments; but when the rooms filled, and the general crowd gave general courage, she was attacked in a manner more pointed and singular” (107). The attacks on Cecilia grow more violent as the party proceeds, but a white domino comes to her rescue and conveys her to a safer part of the room (125). This scene demonstrates the vulnerability of a young woman at these parties, and the actions of the white domino, as well as Cecilia’s attackers, are paralleled in the world outside the masquerade, signifying a young woman’s need for protection against the threats of everyday life.

Although Belinda was written in 1801, a few years after Austen wrote “Jack &

Alice,” it is interesting to note the similarities in the two masquerade scenes. Like

Austen, Edgeworth presents her male love interest, Clarence Hervey, without a masquerade costume. And like Charles Adams, Clarence Hervey is described as having rays that come from his eyes. However, Hervey is without a costume due to a comical mishap:

He had contrived a set of phosphoric rays, which he was certain would

charm all the fair daughters of Eve. He forgot, it seems, that phosphorus

could not well be seen by candlelight. When he was just equipped as a

serpent, his rays set fire to part of his envelope, and it was with the

greatest difficulty that he was extricated. He escaped unhurt, but his

serpent's skin was utterly consumed; nothing remained but the melancholy

spectacle of its skeleton. He was obliged to give up the hopes of shining at

the masquerade. (22-23)

The similarities between the masquerade scenes in Belinda and “Jack & Alice” are uncanny and confirm Austen’s mature understanding of popular literature. Additionally,

“Jack & Alice” explores themes paralleled in Belinda, most notably the influence of older women on young heroines. In Belinda, the heroine fears the power Lady Delacour has to influence the trajectory of her life, while in “Jack & Alice,” our young heroine, who should be wary, seems unaware of Lady Williams’ influence or her duplicitous nature.

While Austen was familiar with the masquerade trope, her use of it in “Jack &

Alice” lacks the intrigue, drama, and didactic message of the sentimental novel. Instead,

Austen uses the masquerade mainly to introduce the characters and hint at their overt and hidden qualities. Our heroine, Alice, along with her parents, arrive dressed as Dominos

“each with a bottle in their hand” and “deeply engaged” at the gaming table (Austen, The

Juvenilia 15). Unlike Cecelia, in Burney’s novel by the same name, our young heroine’s virtue is not under attack. In fact, her choice of costume and un-ladylike behavior separate her from the other women at the party, who use the masquerade as an

18 opportunity to reveal their best and worst attributes. Among the guests at the masquerade are Austen’s first trio of sisters, the Simpson sisters, who together exemplify fierce female rivalry. Austen uses the sisters to paint a startling portrait of the enmity between women forced to compete for the attention of men. This portrait of the competitive world of husband-hunting illustrates the shocking lengths women will go to secure a comfortable future. The Simpson sisters include Miss Caroline Simpson, “pleasing in her person, in her Manners and in her Disposition; an unbounded ambition was her only fault” (14). The name Caroline was made popular by Queen Caroline, the wife of King

George II, and provides a regal authority to the eldest Simpson sister. Austen would use the name again in Pride and Prejudice for the equally ambitious Caroline Bingley (Sabor

386). Meanwhile, the middle sister, Sukey, a nickname for Susan, is “Envious Spitefull, and Malicious … short, fat, and disagreeable” (14). The third sister, Cecilia, is “perfectly handsome but too affected to be pleasing” (14). Cecilia’s affectedness echoes Phila

Walter’s criticism of Austen, and the use of the name Cecilia links her to Burney’s

Cecilia, suggesting that she is a modeled after an affected sentimental heroine. The three sisters represent a feminine hierarchy of Austen’s society, each sister representing a caricature of femininity, intrinsically linked by familial and social bonds. The three

Simpson sisters appear at the masquerade dressed according to or in contrast with their true natures. Miss Simpson’s desire to marry for power is hinted at in her Sultana costume, and Sukey’s jealousy is announced in her costume representing Envy.

Meanwhile, Cecilia dressed as a beautiful Flora, or goddess of nature, appears “reclining in a studied attitude on a couch” (15). Cecilia’s affected pose highlights her inability to

appear natural, despite what her costume is meant to suggest.

Another guest, and one of the more complex characters in “Jack & Alice,” is Lady

Williams, “a widow with a handsome Jointure and the remains of a very handsome face”

(14). She arrives at the masquerade dressed as Virtue, and we are told she embodies

every virtue, and “Tho’ Benevolent and Candid, she was Generous and sincere; Tho’

Pious and Good, she was Religious and amiable, and Tho’ Elegant and Agreable, she was

Polished and Entertaining” (14). Sabor explains that Austen is mimicking Johnsonian

symmetry, by creating antitheses which are false (385). By exaggerating Lady Williams’ goodness, Austen is signaling to her readers to be wary, and as the story unfolds, we see that Lady Williams apparent goodness hides a manipulative and duplicitous reality. Lady

Williams is the first of a long line of Austen widows to use her freedom and social standing to manipulate others, and appears to have a direct ancestral link to Lady Susan.

At the masquerade we meet a likely ancestor of Mr. Fitzwilliam Darcy, Charles

Adams. Austen emphasizes the heroic qualities of Adams, who possesses so “dazzling a

Beauty that none but Eagles could look him in the Face” (Austen, Juvenilia 14). Peter

Sabor explains that Austen appears to be drawing on the traditional belief that only eagles

can look at the sun, as well as a line from Sir Charles Grandison, wherein Charles is

described as having a light-emitting gaze: “a sun-beam from my brother’s eye seemed to

play upon his face and dazzle his eyes” (qtd. in Sabor 384). Charles is so radiant that

when he appears at the masquerade it is believed he is wearing the mask of the sun god.

However, from a safe distance it is discovered that Charles is not wearing a mask at all,

reiterating earlier claims to the brilliance of his beauty. Additionally, Charles’s appearing

“in his plain green coat, without any mask at all” (15), suggests that he is not attempting

to hide his true character from his neighbors. He is the only unmasked character at the masquerade, and as the story continues, we learn that he is not one to hide his true nature; therefore, while he is a cruel heartbreaker, he does so without the aid of deception.

Like traditional depictions of the masquerade, Austen’s story contains unrestrained collective behavior, including eating, drinking, and gaming to excess (Castle

904). The first chapter concludes with the entire company removing their masks and retiring to another room to “partake of elegant and well managed Entertainment,” or a meal, after which “the Bottle being pretty briskly pushed about by the 3 Johnsons, the whole party not excepting even Virtue were carried home, Dead Drunk” (Austen,

Juvenilia 16). This scene sharply contrasts with Austen’s mature novels, which are largely devoid of debauchery in the foreground, only hinting at it in depictions of characters like Lydia in Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Elton in Emma, and Mr. Price in

Mansfield Park. While her mature novels, for the most part, avoid depictions of drunkenness, Austen would write to her sister in late November 1800, “I believe I drank too much wine last night at Hurstbourne” (Le Faye 62), and in November 1813 she writes to Cassandra, saying “I am put on the Sofa near the Fire & can drink as much wine as I like,” destroying any illusion that Austen was herself a teetotaler (261).

While the masquerade scene provides an overview of the characters in “Jack &

Alice,” it is the portrayal of the intimate friendships between the women that unmask the characters. The first friendship we encounter is between Alice and Lady Williams. The story picks up three months after the masquerade with a comical discussion of the effect

Charles Adams had on each of the women at the party. The narrator explains that despite

the “singularity of his appearance, the beams which darted from his eyes, the brightness

of his Wit, and the whole of his tout ensemble,” five of the six women in attendance had

“returned uncaptivated” (Austen, Juvenilia 16). Alice alone has fallen for the dashing

gentleman, while the Simpsons were “defended from his Power by Ambition, Envy, and

Self-admiration,” and Miss Williams was “too sensible to fall in love with one so much

her Junior” (16). Here Austen defeats the power of the conventional hero, who enters the

playing field with every advantage and no impediments to his choice of a wife. Alice

alone has designs on the only young man in Pammydiddle, or so we are led to believe.

However, as the narrative proceeds, we learn that Alice’s confident, the “benevolent”

Lady Williams has designs of her own. Alice greatly admires Lady Williams, comparing

her to “the great Sir Charles Grandison” (17), a high compliment given Austen’s love of

the book; “a work which she knew through and through” (Southam, Sir Charles

Grandison and Jane Austen's Men 76). This comparison suggests that Alice believes

Lady Williams to be a woman of tremendous character and masculine agency. Similarly,

it is believed that Charles Adams is named for Charles Grandison, suggesting that Alice

believes him to be of excellent character. However, by the story’s end, we learn that Lady

Williams is antagonistic and duplicitous and Adams an arrogant scoundrel. By linking

Charles Adams and Lady Williams to Grandison, Austen is either mocking Alice’s inability to see the truth about the two, or she is hinting that she finds Grandison to be an impossible hero.

Austen’s development of Lady Williams over a series of chapters is artful, and

provides a big payoff in the final chapter, demonstrating the young author’s

understanding of character development. For example, throughout the story, Lady

Williams, while acting as Alice’s confident, intentionally antagonizes the young woman by insinuating that she has “too much colour” in her cheeks; possibly an inside joke about

Austen’s own red cheeks. The relationship between the two women provides an interesting contrast, as Alice maintains the innocence of her youth and inexperience, while Lady Williams uses her experience to manipulate her young friend into violent rages for her own demented pleasure.

Austen uses narrative framing to move the plot in various directions, a technique

popular in adventuring novels such as Tom Jones and The Female Quixote. The first

example occurs at the end of the second chapter, when Alice asks Lady Williams to favor

her with her “Life and Adventures” (Austen, Juvenilia 18). Margaret Anne Doody

suggests that Austen’s choice of words alludes to The Female Quixote, in which the

heroine, Arabella, asks the Countess “to favour her with the Recital of her Adventures,”

to which the Countess replies:

The Word Adventures carries in it so free and licentious a Sound in the

Apprehensions of People at this Period of Time, that it can hardly with

Propriety be applied to those few and natural Incidents which compose the

History of a Woman of Honour … I have told you all the material

Passages of my Life, which upon Enquiry you will find differ very little

from those of other Women of the same Rank, who have a moderate Share

of Sense, Prudence and Virtue. (Lennox 327)

The Countess’ response indicates the impropriety of so personal a question, suggesting

that Alice’s question lack modesty. Nevertheless, Lady Williams complies without

hesitation, and we are indeed favored with the beginnings of Lady Williams’ life and

adventures. However, Lady Williams avoids revealing too much by turning the

conversation back to her earlier criticism of women with “too much colour” (Austen,

Juvenilia 19). Because Alice is drunk at this point in the story, we can infer that Austen

may be hinting at flushed cheeks brought on by excessive drinking, or it may be a joke about heroines from sentimental novels, who frequently blush. More importantly, it is evident that Lady Williams makes the comment with the intention of angering Alice.

What makes the exchange between the two women so successful, from a comedic standpoint, is the juxtaposition of the ever-cool Lady Williams with the passion of young

Alice, whose command of her temper is consistently weakened by “too much drink” (20).

Alice becomes so enraged that “From Words she almost comes to Blows,” and her father must force her away, bringing the chapter to an abrupt end. Here we see the first example of girl-on-girl violence, a theme that develops and darkens throughout the story.

The nature of the women’s relationship changes when they come across “a lovely

young Woman lying apparently in great pain beneath a Citron tree” (22), while out on a

walk from “her Ladyship’s pigstye to Charles Adams’s Horsepond” (20). Here Austen

mocks the picturesque by emphasizing two mundane realities of country life: a pigsty and

horse pond. Austen’s later juvenilia incorporates a more developed criticism of the

picturesque, suggesting her disapproval of the contrived aspects of the artistic

philosophy. However, in “Jack & Alice” the description of the setting feels more like a

stage direction, as Lady Williams and Alice advance towards the young woman with

“sympathizing Tenderness” and, appearing to speak in unison, accost the young woman

in these terms: “You seem fair Nymph to be laboring under some misfortune which we

shall be happy to relieve if you will inform us what it is” (22). This moment feels

fantastically staged, as the women speak in unison in a cadence that is absent from any

other scene in the story. Doody suggests that this scene is an allusion to Charlotte Smith’s

Emmeline, wherein a secondary female character, Adeline, “half obscured by the pendant

trees,” relates a harrowing account of her life and it is discovered she is sick (pregnant)

(Austen Catherine and Other Writings 294). I would suggest that Austen is insinuating

that the young woman they come across in the citron grove is pregnant given the

connection to Emmeline and Austen’s use of the phrase “laboring under some

misfortune” (Austen, Juvenilia 22). Additionally, the women promise to “relieve” her if

she will tell them what is troubling her, which Lady Williams does when she magically

mends the young woman’s broken leg. Or is it some other, unspeakable act that Lady

Williams performs to alleviate her condition?

The young woman, Lucy, represents the tragic heroine often found in sentimental

novels. Due to circumstances beyond her control, she is born into a family without fortune, and despite her accomplishments, she will likely never be found suitable for marriage in a good family. Like Nancy in Tom Jones, Lucy, as the daughter of a tailor, must be mindful of her position and refrain from any activity that would call her virtue into question. Unfortunately, Lucy does not have the benefit of Mrs. Miller’s guidance, and she runs away to give herself to Charles Adams, finding she is unable to “resist his

25 attractions” (23). I propose that while Austen does not spell it out for her readers, it appears Lucy has sacrificed her virtue to Adams. Lucy has been caught in Adams’ trap and “broken her leg.” At the young woman’s request, her aunt attempts to discover, through the network of servants, if there should be any chance of Adams returning the young woman’s affection, but the aunt learns from Adams’ cook that her Master will never marry, for he has often declared that his wife must possess “Youth, Beauty, Birth,

Wit, Merit, and Money” (23). The cook laments at the improbability of his ever meeting with such a Lady, anticipating Elizabeth Bennet’s warning to Darcy regarding accomplished women (Austen, Pride and Prejudice 29). The desperate young woman, unthwarted by her aunt’s discovery, writes Adams a letter to offer “with great tenderness

[her] hand and heart,” to which she receives “an angry and peremptory refusal” (Austen,

Juvenilia 24). Believing Adams has refused out of modesty, she presses him again, only to be further rebuffed by his unwillingness to answer any of her letters and his leaving the country. However, taking Adams’ “Silence for Consent,” she follows him to

Pammydiddle “with a heart elated by the expected happiness of beholding him” (24). The young lady’s proposal demonstrates masculine agency, and her erroneous belief that

Adam’s refusal is a bit of coquetry is the seed of Mr. Collins proposal to Elizabeth in

Pride and Prejudice (75-79). As a whole, the Lucy narrative suggests Austen’s frustration with women’s place in society. Lucy’s education makes her unsuitable for marriage in her own social station, and her lack of fortune makes her unsuitable to marry above her station. Furthermore, unlike heroines in sentimental novels, it is improbable that Lucy’s charm will be enough to overcome the obstacles of her social position or her

lost virtue. As such, Lucy is trapped by the constraints of a social system that provides

little hope for women to advance in society.

Throughout the juvenilia and even in Austen’s mature novels we see few

examples of effective guidance for young women, especially in the form of proper

parents. Paula Byrne explains that this is partly a plot device that forces the heroine to

“make her own choices, judgments and mistakes before reaching maturity and finding an

equal mate worthy of her” (Byrne 25). While I disagree that Austen’s heroines eventually

find worthy mates, I agree that this plot device allows Austen to mold her characters with

fortitude enough to defy conventionality, even if only for a brief period. Furthermore, I

believe that the absence of a suitable guardian opens space for friendship subplots, which further reveal the lack of support young women are likely to encounter. Like many

Austen heroines, Alice is most definitely lacking the guidance of good parenting, but it is not only Alice who suffers. Jack Johnson, the brother of Alice, enters the story in Chapter the Seventh just long enough for the reader to be informed that Jack’s “unfortunate propensity to Liquor, which so completely deprived him of the use of those faculties

Nature had endowed him with,” precluded him of ever doing “anything worth mentioning” (Austen, Juvenilia 27). In the next sentence he is dead from the “natural

Consequence of this pernicious practice” (27). While the absurdity of the narrator’s claims that Jack is the hero of the story is funny, Austen’s decision to kill off the young man is a macabre statement on the dangers of excess, and further proof that Alice is without proper guidance. When Jack dies, Alice becomes “the sole inheritress of a very large fortune,” which gives her fresh hopes of “rendering herself acceptable as a wife to

Charles Adams” (27). However, Adams is insulted by the proposal, suggesting that Alice

is “neither sufficiently beautiful, sufficiently amiable, sufficiently witty, nor sufficiently rich” for him (28). Adams’ rejection of Alice anticipates Mr. Darcy’s disdainful remarks

about Elizabeth in Pride and Prejudice (Austen Pride and Prejudice 9). And just as

Darcy is described as “the proudest most disagreeable man in the world” (8), it can be said that Adams held that title before him. Upon hearing Adams’ answer, Alice “flew to her Bottle and it was soon forgot” (Austen, Juvenilia 29). Likewise, Alice is forgotten by the narrator and does not appear in the last two chapters, except to say that she never thought of Lucy again after the one day they had spent together (31-32). Austen’s abandonment of her anti-heroine suggests that either the young author became bored with the storyline, or that unmarriageable women are inconsequential or both.

Meanwhile, in Chapter the Seventh, we learn that the other young ladies are to travel to Bath, likely for the purpose of becoming acquainted with suitable husbands. In this episode, Miss Simpson and Lucy become instant friends, when immediately upon meeting Lucy, the eldest Miss Simpson invites her to accompany them to Bath. In Bath, charming Lucy is “conquering every Heart” (29), nearly effacing “from her remembrance the captivating form of Charles” and “what her Heart had formerly suffered by his charms and her Leg by his trap” (29). While in Bath, Lucy receives an offer of marriage from the Duke of __, “an elderly Man of noble fortune whose ill health was the chief inducement of his Journey to Bath” (29), Lady Williams exclaims in response:

Why do you hesitate my dearest Lucy … I have enquired into his

Character and find him to be an unprincipled, illiterate Man. Never shall

my Lucy be united to such a one! He has a princely fortune, which is

every day increasing. How nobly will you spend it!, what credit will you

give him in the eyes of all!, How much will he be respected on his Wife’s

account! (30-31)

Here, we see the shrewdness of Lady Williams as an experienced husband-hunter, a quality she shares with Austen’s most notorious widow and husband-hunter, Lady Susan.

Marriage is Lady Williams’ career and her attempts to get Lucy married reflect her understanding of Lucy’s position. However, the relationship between Lady Williams and

Lucy mirrors the earlier friendship between Lady Williams and Alice. Just as Lady

Williams used Alice for her own perverse pleasure, she appears to be using Lucy in the same manner. In a letter to Lucy, Lady Williams employs double-talk to simultaneously encourage the young girl to marry the Duke, while begging her to return to her and never leave, even though it would be too great an expense to her and would leave her in ruin

(31). Lady Williams’ duplicitous letter hides her true intentions, which are revealed in the final lines of the story. Lady Williams outwardly shows her affection for Lucy, while secretly hoping she will marry the Duke and leave Pammydiddle. With Lucy out of the picture, she is rid of all possible impediments to her marrying Adams, a plot line that

Austen would re-visit in Lady Susan.

Unfortunately for poor Lucy, she is sacrificed to “the Envy and Malice of Sukey, who jealous of her superior charms took her by poison from an admiring World at the age of seventeen” (31). Sukey herself would find her own end when she was “speedily raised to the Gallows” upon the discovery of the “barbarous Murder” (32). Gilbert and Gubar

29 suggest that the competition set up in “Jack & Alice” is a precursor to the competition between Emma Woodhouse, Harriet Smith, and Jane Fairfax over Mr. Knightly in Emma, and argue that Lucy’s tragic death in “Jack & Alice” is not surprising (126). Lucy represents the sacrifice made of many a young girl who without the protection of a family or husband is vulnerable to the cruelties of Regency society. However, it is important to recognize that Alice, our heroine, has swallowed her own poison and effectually killed her hopes of finding a suitable husband.

The story ends with the marriage of Caroline Simpson, who is raised to the rank of Duchess, when she marries dead Lucy’s former fiancé. Sukey is raised on the scaffold, and Celine supplants her eldest sister by becoming the favorite Sultana of the emperor of

Delhi (Austen, Juvenilia 32). Meanwhile, back in Pammydiddle, reports are circulated of

Charles Adams’ intended marriage to none other than Lady Williams.

While “Jack & Alice” is meant to make us laugh, the depiction of girl-on-girl violence, resulting in the death of two characters, hints at the young Austen’s understanding of the systemic anxiety faced by young girls in a world filled with too few options for women. Or as Johnson suggests, a closer examination reveals that “Jack &

Alice” “seems all-too-serious, and all the funnier for being so” (52). The success of Alice as a character can be measured by her contrast to the other women in the story, who are satirical depictions of women in popular fiction. Lady Williams, Lucy, and Miss Johnson all possess idealized feminine qualities that reflect various tried-and-true story lines: the duplicitous widow, the sacrificed heroine, and the young woman marrying for money.

Alice, however, is incapable of conforming to such artificial and limiting expectations of

a young woman. Yet, while she is ill-suited to be a traditional literary heroine, in the end she escapes marrying the narcissistic Charles Adams, she escapes death, and she escapes

marrying an old man with nothing but a fortune to offer. Furthermore, Alice has her own fortune, which provides her a freedom the other women cannot begin to imagine. While

Austen abandons Alice in Pammydiddle with her bottle in Chapter the Seventh, I would

argue that Alice is the seed of a long line of unconventional heroines that emerge in

Austen’s writing, heralding the rebellion against restrictive rules of proper society. As

Austen’s writing evolved, so too did her heroines, and by the time she published her first

novel, she had developed the awkward Alice into a more refined, if still unconventional,

form that would evolve into the standard for modern-day heroines.

3 VOLUME THE SECOND: “LESLEY CASTLE”

“Lesley Castle” is the second entry in Volume the Second, following “Love and

Freindship.” It was dedicated to Austen’s brother “Henry Thomas Austen Esqre” in 1792, the year Henry completed his BA at Oxford (Sabor 445). Jane would have been sixteen at

the time. The story is set, in part, in Scotland, a considerable distance from Austen’s

home in Steventon. It is likely Austen was inspired by Samuel Johnson’s “A Journey to

the Western Islands of Scotland” (1775) and Gilpin’s Tour of the Headlands (1789), both

books being part of the family library. These books would have offered Austen an escape

from the mundane routine of her own life, which was largely spent at home, unlike that of

her brothers, who traveled for either work or an education.

“Lesley Castle” is a burlesque of popular epistolary novels, such as Richardson’s

Pamela, Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther, and Laclos’ Dangerous Liaisons (1782).

And while Austen’s epistolary style mocks the sentimentality of Pamela and lacks the

sexual intrigue of Dangerous Liaisons, it embodies the delicious narcissism of Young

Werther. According to Gilbert and Gubar, Austen refuses to “appreciate such angelic

paragons as Clarissa or Pamela,” criticizing “the morally pernicious equation of female

virtue with passivity, or masculinity with aggression” (119). Consequently, rather than

emulate the sentimental style, Austen uses the epistolary style to capture the venomous

masculine aggression of a few of the most narcissistic female characters in the juvenilia,

namely Margaret Lesley, Charlotte Lutterell, and Lady Susan Fitzgerald Lesley. These

three women use the format of the letter to full advantage, creating narratives limited

only by their sharply focused agendas, largely ignoring the content of the letters they are

32 answering, and sending seeds of hate on the winds of their epistolary exchanges. In this chapter, I will begin with brief critical survey of critics and a discussion of the significance of gossip and female friendship “Lesley Castle,” followed by an evaluation of the two primary story lines presented in the various correspondence. Because there are numerous plot lines introduced through letters, I will concentrate first on the whole of

Margaret’s narrative, focusing on the hypocrisy of her criticism of her sister-in-law, who has escaped Lesley Castle by inappropriate measures, and the praise of her brother, who has also left the Castle, leaving behind the couple’s young daughter. Finally, I will explore Charlotte’s narrative, focusing on the significance of her relationship with food, the history of food in popular eighteenth-century literature, and the implications of

Austen’s depiction of the food-obsessed Charlotte. The storylines of both Margaret and

Charlotte offer a rare glimpse of the intimate feelings of young women, who through their correspondence express uncensored feelings of resentment at their limited experiences as women.

Many critics suggest that Austen’s juvenilia are a reflection of the young author’s dissatisfaction with the limitations placed on women in the eighteenth century, especially women of the gentry class, “to whom, by clear social convention, nothing was supposed to happen” (Spacks 125-126). Patricia Meyer Spacks suggests Austen’s early work, including “Lesley Castle,” confronts “the fact that the substance of everyday life provides little obvious data for compelling fiction” (125-126). According to Spacks, Austen’s

“small fictions construct themselves from nonhappening rather than happening,” so that

“stressing poverty of experience, they force the reader to attend to non-plots” (125). This

is especially true in “Lesley Castle,” as we observe the women exclusively through their

correspondence, which largely relates to their experiences in their household, rather

depictions of travel or adventuring. Additionally, while marriage plots are hinted at, they

are secondary to the real drama, which is found in the relationships among the female

characters, who exist simultaneously as friends and rivals. According to Deborah J.

Knuth, “Austen’s earliest writings are no doubt in dialogue with and satirical of the cult of friendship in popular novels of the late eighteenth century” (96). But they also demonstrate the ugly rivalry that lies just below the artifice of good manners. Knuth argues that Austen’s “dismissal of one kind of ‘friendship’ in her work need not mean that Austen sees women’s friendship as unimportant, or even secondary, in comparison to marriage” (96). I would agree and add that the depictions of friendship in the juvenilia demonstrate a sisterhood of suffering. Who but another woman could understand the frustration, resentment, and mental anguish of being constantly deprived of the opportunities reserved for and accessible only to men?

An essential element of the friendship plot is the role of proper etiquette in the lives of women in the eighteenth century. Johnson refers to Austen as “a novelist of manners” (57) and suggests that “many of the uproariously funny parts of the juvenilia will be lost on us unless we register the growing importance granted to female manners during the time Austen wrote” (54). The most entertaining letters in “Lesley Castle” are filled with narcissistic self-congratulatory remarks, along with backhanded compliments

dressed up in pretty words, such as the final letter, in which Margaret tells Charlotte that

she has grown weary of the “extreme Admiration” she meets “in Public, in Private, in

Papers, and in Printshops,” before lamenting, “How often have I wished that I possessed as little personal Beauty as you do; that my figure were as inelegant; my face as unlovely and my Appearance as unpleasing as yours!” (172). This final letter reveals the tension that has built up between the two young women throughout the story and illustrates one of the few forms of power women might exercise in the eighteenth century. Through correspondence women safely expressed their buried resentments and demonstrated their keen intelligence with well-placed insults.

Austen’s early audiences would have been familiar with the epistolary novel and

“would have had certain expectations of the epistolary form” (Kaplan 79), but Austen

pushes the boundaries of her audience’s expectations, using the intimacy of the epistolary

style to deliver a scathing look at female friendship. Blakey Vermeule asserts that gossip

in the novel is “inevitable,” and with “one turn of the screw … all epistolary novels look

like gossip” (qtd. in Goss 167). Similarly, Erin Goss suggests that gossip is portrayed in

“Lesley Castle” “as a key aspect of social life,” serving two main functions in Austen’s

writing: “to produce and connect community through shared information and mutually

constructed stories, and to provide surveillance of that community and keep it in line with

its own established norms” (165-166). Gossips run mad in Austen’s juvenilia, serving as

sources of various plot lines and reinforcing the idea that female friendships are

complicated. Austen’s published novels also use gossip as a narrative device through

such memorable characters as Mrs. Jennings in Sense and Sensibility, whose propensity

to introduce gossip into every conversation embarrasses and alienates the young

Marianne Dashwood, who says of Mrs. Jennings: “Her kindness is not sympathy; her

good-nature is not tenderness. All that she wants is gossip, and she only likes me now

because I supply it” (142). Unlike Mrs. Jennings’ brash style, Miss Bates in Emma is

considered an innocuous annoyance, a “great talker upon little matters … full of trivial communications and harmless gossip” (16). Regardless of the irritation they cause in their respective stories, Mrs. Jennings and Miss Bates appear harmless compared to the malicious gossips in “Lesley Castle.”

Austen’s own correspondence exposes her as a bit of gossip and sometimes shockingly malicious. In one of Austen’s most scandalous letters, she writes to her sister

Cassandra: “Mrs. Hall, of Sherbonne, was brought to bed yesterday of a dead child, some weeks before she expected, owning to a fright. I suppose she happened unawares to look at her husband” (La Faye, Jane Austen’s Letters 17). The excerpt from this letter, written in October 1798, demonstrates Austen’s unsettling sense of humor and echoes the dark humor found in her juvenilia. Audrey Bilger explains that this type of “violent comedy” is “a comic mode in which brutal and painful events are described in a setting or tone that invites laughter” (323). She suggests that “by taking pleasure in violence, the woman writer flaunts her own violation of tradition; she refuses to bury female pain, but she also refuses to succumb to despair” (327). Austen’s juvenilia tackles issues of oppression and violence against women, especially in the domestic sphere. However, Austen must have recognized the limited appeal of violent comedy when writing for publication, as her mature novels are largely sanitized, leaving only hints of the acerbic wit of her youthful writings.

“Lesley Castle” begins with a letter from Miss Margaret Lesley to Miss Charlotte

Luttrell, which introduces the friendship plot front and center in the mocking tone for

which the juvenilia are known. The two young women met in school, where their two

“tender Hearts” were “closely linked together by the ties of sympathy and Freindship”

(145). Charlotte lives with her family in Sussex and Margaret lives in a “Mouldering

Castle … situated two miles from Perth on a bold projecting Rock” (144), with her sister

Matilda and her brother’s two-year-old daughter Louisa. Austen’s decision to place

Margaret in a castle in Scotland gives the story a slightly Gothic feel, hinting at the social

constraints Margaret, her sister Matilda, and their young niece Louisa experience – a

sharp contrast to the freedom the men of the family enjoy. Meanwhile, Charlotte’s

geographical positioning in Sussex hints at a more liberated and enviable existence. The

Gothic aspect of Margaret’s situation also provides a comedic element in that the Gothic

setting is not supported by the presence of a sentimental heroine. The Lesley sisters are

without chaperone; however, unlike typical heroines of sentimental fiction, Margaret

Lesley is anything but sentimental. Her acerbic wit and overabundant confidence make her an unlikely dupe for any man seeking to corrupt her virtue. Cleverly, Austen creates in Charlotte a similarly unsentimental character with whom Margaret can exchange passive aggressive barbs, demonstrating Austen’s knack for dressing up insults in etiquette. Nevertheless, while it may appear from time to time that Margaret and

Charlotte are being unkind, what is essential to the relationship is the comradery of women. Margaret’s relationship with her own sister Matilda is rarely mentioned, perhaps due to indifference, while Charlotte experiences tremendous resentment towards her affianced sister Eloisa. Throughout the story, the friends act more as receptacles for one

another’s complaints, rarely offering helpful advice or assistance. Their relationship,

therefore, demonstrates the limitations of genuine friendship between women who are limited in experience and freedom.

But not all the women in “Lesley Castle” feel constrained by their role as women

of a certain social class. Margaret’s sister-in-law, Louisa, leaves the confines of her

marriage and the responsibilities as a mother with “Danvers and dishonor,” moves to

Italy, and re-marries. Unfortunately, while she attains her freedom, her rebellious act

places additional burdens on Margaret and Matilda, who are left to raise Louisa’s

daughter (143). Additionally, Margaret’s brother leaves for the ancient city of Aberdeen

shortly after his wife’s departure (143), ultimately meeting up with her again in Italy

where he also re-marries. Louisa has escaped the confinement of the castle, but only by

dishonorable means; and as in most of the stories in the juvenilia, she is never punished

for her indiscretion. Even the gossip that follows her departure has little effect on her.

Unfortunately, it is Margaret who is left behind to bear the burden of the gossip about her

sister-in-law, which has been a great source of entertainment for Charlotte and her set.

Margaret is very critical of her sister-in-law for abandoning her marriage and child but,

ironically, she has nothing but praise for her brother, who, “impatient for travel,” also

abandons his daughter, leaving his burden in the care of his sisters (145). Likewise,

Margaret’s father is “fluttering about the Streets of London, gay, dissipated, and

Thoughtless at the age of 57” (144). In this sense, we can see the Gothic implications of

Lesley Castle as it acts as a prison for the young Lesley women, who are forced to remain at home carrying for their brother’s child, while the men in their lives experience the

38 freedom and adventures of male agency. However, that is where the Gothic sensibilities end in “Lesley Castle.”

Later in the story, Margaret learns that her father has married Charlotte’s friend,

Susan Fitzgerald. Margaret learns of the marriage through her correspondence with

Charlotte rather than from her father, and her response to Charlotte’s letter demonstrates the young woman’s anxiety about the dispersal of the Lesley fortune to the new wife.

We learn from Letter the Fourth that Margaret’s new step-mother Lady Susan Lesley is

short, and extremely well-made; is naturally pale, but rouges a good deal;

has fine eyes, and fine teeth, as she will take care to let you know as soon

as she sees you and is altogether very pretty. She is remarkably good-

tempered when she has her own way, and very lively when she is not out

of humor. She is naturally extravagant and not very affected. (154)

The description is not a flattering one and takes very little decoding. Austen is likely implying inferior birth by Susan’s short stature, and her use of the name Susan suggests she is a relation to “Sukey” from “Jack & Alice” and a likely ancestor of Lady Susan.

Her pale skin and rouged cheeks suggest she is out of fashion, since rouge was becoming unfashionable in the 1780s (Sabor 449). Additionally, this appears to be a return to the joke in “Jack & Alice” about a woman having too much color in her checks. In comic juxtaposition, Margaret replies to Charlotte’s letter informing her that she has met her new mother and discovering her not so pretty as Charlotte considers her, finding

“something so extremely unmajestic in her little diminutive figure, as to render her in comparison with the elegant height of Matilda and Myself, an insignificant Dwarf” (157).

As in most of Austen’s novels, a suitable maternal figure is hard to find in “Lesley

Castle.” Spacks claims that “Jane Austen does not concern herself with the duties of mothers. Mothers or mother figures play highly significant roles in the novels and in the juvenilia, but the only good mothers are dead; the rest are either ineffectual … or offensive” (182). Margaret’s new stepmother is no exception. Letter the Sixth is from

Lady Susan Lesley to Charlotte, in which she offers her impressions of Lesley Castle and the giant girls who occupy it. From Lady Lesley’s letter we learn that she possesses many of the same characteristics of the future Lady Susan. She has no interest in the Lesley sisters, whom she describes as “Fair Damsels,” “Scotch Giants,” and “Scotch wretches,” and refers to little Louisa as “little humored Brat,” insisting she “hate(s) Scandal and detest(s) children” (158-159). Lady Lesley also reports that her brother William has accompanied her to Lesley Castle and developed a growing affection for Matilda. Lady

Lesley, finding nothing about her new family to please her, attempts to dissuade her brother from pursuing the elder Lesley sister. Through Lady Lesley’s argument with her brother, we are reminded that she is in direct competition with her step-daughters for her husband’s resources. However, William has the luxury of viewing the girls more objectively, because he is not in competition with them.

Meanwhile, Margaret’s brother has written from Paris to say he is preparing to begin his route to Italy, after recovering his “Health and Spirits” in France. Lesley declares he has “entirely ceased to think of Louisa with any degree either of Pity or

Affection,” and “feels himself obliged to her for her Elopement, as he thinks it very good fun to be single again” (150). While Margaret and Matilda remain in the moldering castle

40 in Scotland, caring for his child, Lesley is free to travel the world.

Margaret voices her frustrations to Charlotte, but focuses her animus on her sister- in-law, suggesting that Louisa had her duplicitous character formed by her conniving father,

who but too well knew, that to be married, would be the only chance she

would have of not being starved, and who flattered himself that with such

an extraordinary share of personal beauty, joined to a gentleness of

Manners, and an engaging address, she might stand a good chance of

pleasing some young man who might afford to marry a Girl without a

Shilling. (151)

Ironically, this scathing depiction of Louisa fails to take into consideration Margaret’s new, lower position in the Lesley family and the necessity for her and her sister to develop “a gentleness of manners, and an engaging address” of their own. Additionally, while the language appears to be attacking Louisa’s behavior, it is essentially attacking societal expectations that force young women to disguise their “natural disposition(s) under the mask of Innocence and Softness” (151). Paradoxically, the epistolary format in

“Lesley Castle” permits the women to remove their “masks of innocence and softness” in order to offer their uncensored critiques of one another.

Meanwhile, Charlotte is trapped under the yoke of domestic responsibilities. In

Letter the Second, we learn that she has been busy preparing for her sister Eloisa’s upcoming marriage to Henry Hervey. Here, Austen calls back to one of the earlier stories in the juvenilia, “Henry & Eliza,” hinting at the unfolding romance between her brother

Henry, for whom the story is dedicated, and their much older cousin Eliza. However, in

“Lesley Castle” all such romance has come to an end for Eloisa, after Henry is thrown

from his horse, fractures his skull, and is “pronounced by his Surgeon to be in the most

eminent Danger” (146). While Eloisa is “White as a Whipt syllabub” with fear and grief,

Charlotte thinks only of her own disappointment, lamenting at her labors over the

wedding feast:

Imagine how great the Disappointment must be to me, when you consider

that after having labored both by Night and by Day, in order to get the

Wedding dinner ready by the time appointed, after having roasted Beef,

Broiled Mutton, and Stewed Soup enough to last the new-married Couple

through the Honey-moon, I had the mortification of finding that I had been

Roasting, Broiling and Stewing both the Meat and Myself to no purpose.

(146)

In her essay “Politics and the Juvenilia,” Johnson suggests that Austen’s depiction

of the Luttrell sisters exaggerates:

the two roles that conventionally circumscribe female destiny: the

delicately etherealized romantic heroine who cares only about music,

sensibility, love and friendship, on the one hand; and on the other, the

bustling, robust housewife, who cares only about her pantry, and who can

scarcely utter a sentence that does not recur to linens, sirloins, or

syllabubs. (54)

In “Lesley Castle,” the focus is not on Charlotte’s “delicately romantic” sister, Eloisa, but

on Charlotte, who is portrayed as a “robust housewife,” hinting at Austen’s desire to put

forward an alternative narrative to that found in sentimental novels. By placing Charlotte at the heart of the story, Austen offers a less sentimental view of femininity.

Nevertheless, her depiction of Charlotte is no less problematic in that she creates a character who, on the surface, embodies an almost sociopathic lack of empathy for her sister. However, I would argue that through her correspondence, Charlotte reveals the impetus for her bad behavior, suggesting the young woman is overwhelmed with a sense of alienation and anxiety about her own future after her sister’s engagement.

Additionally, she mourns the loss of the intimate bond she shared with her sister, and the mutual admiration for one another’s talents: “We have for many years entered into an agreement always to admire each other’s works; I never fail listening to her music, and she is as constant in eating my pies” (164-165). In this rare moment of vulnerability,

Austen exposes the raw tender emotion hidden behind Charlotte’s mask of cold-hearted competency.

It is possible that Austen identified with Charlotte, “for both share a respect for menu-planning as well as an ability to look upon the dramas unfolding before them with a detachment ‘as cool as a Cream-cheese’” (Johnson 54-55). Additionally, Austen may have feared losing her older sister to marriage someday, especially since the two were so close throughout their lives. With regard to Charlotte’s obsession with Eloisa’s wedding feast, Johnson suggests that cooking as depicted in “Lesley Castle” serves “as a clear political cue,” echoing such reformists as Mary Wollstonecraft, who “suggested female occupations were confining” and promoted more education and moral agency for women

in opposition to a conservative agenda that “urged the primacy of women’s domestic

responsibilities” (55). Some critics suggest that the Charlotte’s pre-occupation with consuming food is equally important. Jillian Heydt-Stevenson suggests that Austen’s

Juvenilia

represents a world in which young women consistently display excessive

appetites – for food, drink, erotic pleasures, and material objects. While

comic, such narrative excess also constitutes a pointed critique of the

constraints Austen’s society placed on women, constraints she not only

exposes but also subverts by her young heroines’ exuberant, even criminal

refusal to deny their appetites and their demand for gratification of all

kinds. (1)

Likewise, Ellen E. Martin suggests that Charlotte “pictures all significance as a form of meal and translates all life’s forces into menu and linen. … To Charlotte, the great events are precisely those that transpire in her kitchen’s precincts” (93). In this manner, Austen illustrates the ways in which women were forced to create meaning out of the mundane.

Charlotte’s preoccupation with food and her resentment for having to labor over the preparation of the wedding feast render her empathetically impotent with regard to her sister’s loss. While Eloisa collapses into convulsive fits of grief, Charlotte heartlessly focuses on her own suffering:

I shall suffer most from it after all; for I shall not only be obliged to eat up

all the Victuals I have dressed already, but must if Hervey should recover

(which however is not very likely) dress as much for you again; or should

he die (as I suppose he will) I shall have to prepare a Dinner for you

whenever you marry anyone else. (147-148)

From Austen’s personal correspondence, we see that she was involved with the management of the family kitchen, but as Christopher Wilkes suggests she “always lived in a house with servants, usually a cook, but also maids,” and her involvement would have focused on “budgetary matters, on arranging for the distribution and reception of fruit, meat and vegetables to and from her own house, and on keeping an eye on the servants as they prepared food” (4-5). An example of such a letter is dated December 1-2,

1798, in which Austen wrote to her sister Cassandra from Steventon to say, among other things, that they had entertained Mr. Lyford, who “came while we were at dinner, and partook of our elegant entertainment. I was not ashamed at asking him to sit down to table, for we had some pease-soup, a sparerib, and a pudding” (Le Faye, Jane Austen’s

Letters 24). In the same letter Austen speaks of a new maid, who “seems to cook very well, is uncommonly stout, and says she can work well at her needle” (25-26). While the letter illustrates Austen’s involvement in the kitchen, it does not suggest the same frustrations expressed by Charlotte.

Food and its association with women, love, and seduction have a long literary tradition. In The Sorrows of Young Werther, the protagonist becomes enchanted with

Charlotte when he encounters her feeding her six siblings with grace and affection

I walked across the court to a well-built house, and, ascending the flight of

steps in front, opened the door, and saw before me the most charming

spectacle I had ever witnessed. Six children, from eleven to two years old,

were running about the hall, and surrounding a lady of middle height, with

a lovely figure, dressed in a robe of simple white, trimmed with pink

ribbons. She was holding a rye loaf in her hand and was cutting slices for

the little ones all around … She performed her task in a graceful and

affectionate manner. (17)

It appears that Austen is mocking the sentimental depiction of Charlotte in The Sorrows of Young Werther by giving her Charlotte none of the compassion or tenderness of

Goethe’s creation. Another alternative depiction of women and food is found in Tom

Jones, when Mrs. Waters attempts to seduce Tom during dinner:

First, from two lovely blue eyes, whose bright orbs flashed lightning at

their discharge, flew forth two pointed ogles; but, happily for our hero, hit

only a vast piece of beef which he was then conveying into his plate, and

harmless spent their force … Many other weapons did she assay; but the

god of eating (if there be any such deity, for I do not confidently assert it)

preserved his votary … and the present security of Jones may be

accounted for by natural means; for as love frequently preserves from the

attacks of hunger, so may hunger possibly, in some cases, defend us

against love. (442-443)

Austen would have been familiar with these works and, like Fielding, she mocks the romantic association between women and food in “Lesley Castle.” Additionally, rather than copying the benevolent figure cut by Charlotte in The Sorrows of Young Werther or

Tom Jones’ seductress, Austen creates in Charlotte Lutterell, a character who rejects the

restrictive social structure of femininity, denouncing the vocation of housewife and

desiring never “to act a more principal part at a Wedding than the superintending and

directing the Dinner” (156). Furthermore, the only sensual pleasure relating to food in

“Lesley Castle” is the indulgent over-eating of Eloisa’s wedding feast. Upon first hearing of Henry’s accident Charlotte decries, “Good God! … why what in the name of Heaven will become of all the Victuals? … I shall manage the Sir-loin myself; my Mother will eat the Soup, and You (Eloisa) and the Doctor must finish the rest” (146). Charlotte and her mother agree that “the best thing we could do was to begin eating the food immediately, and accordingly we ordered up the cold Ham and Fowls, and instantly began our Devouring Plan on them with great Alacrity” (147). Charlotte takes “down the remains of The Ham and Chicken” (148), the servants are ordered to “eat as hard as they possibly could, and to call in a couple of Chairwomen to assist them” (153), and “a cold

Pigeon-pye, a cold turkey, a cold tongue, and half a dozen Jellies” are consumed with the

“help of our Landlady, her husband, and their three children” (153). This is nothing less than a hedonistic food orgy, revealing a fundamental sybaritic sensibility which has been oppressed by a buttoned-up society. However, there is also an underlying anxiety present in the meticulous detailing of the food, which demonstrates Charlotte’s anxiety about waste and her great disappointment at not having had the opportunity to properly entertain the wedding guests. Charlotte explains in Letter the Seventh that food preparation was part of her education, and while her sister enjoyed reading histories, she enjoyed reading “receipts,” and while her sister enjoyed drawing pictures, she enjoyed drawing pullets, and while “no one could sing a better Song than She, no one could make

a better Pye than I” (164). Le Faye suggests that “lavish entertaining was understandably

a source of pride to the hostess, and equally a source of great interest to her guests and

neighbors” (The Jane Austen Cookbook 12). Meals were often memorialized in “letters,

memoirs, and diaries of the period,” providing descriptions of the meals, including catalogs of the numerous dishes (12-13). Furthermore, obtaining the necessary ingredients “for these vast meals was a never-ending problem for the hostess, involving continual culinary tasks and forward planning” (16). With this in mind, we can see that

Charlotte’s emphasis on the food is also a reflection of her lost opportunity to demonstrate her house-keeping skills and possibly attract a husband for herself. Despite

Charlotte’s principled rejection of marriage, it is likely that any young woman without a fortune of her own would have experienced anxiety about her future and contemplated marriage as a security against poverty.

Austen’s depiction of Charlotte’s anxiety about wasting of the wedding feast is brilliantly funny and fits within the expansive boundaries of her juvenilia. However,

Austen provides a much more subdued version of this theme in Emma when, after the loss of Miss Taylor to marriage, Mr. Woodhouse becomes distressed over the remains of the wedding cake:

There was no recovering Miss Taylor—nor much likelihood of ceasing to

pity her; but a few weeks brought some alleviation to Mr. Woodhouse.

The compliments of his neighbors were over; he was no longer teased by

being wished joy of so sorrowful an event; and the wedding-cake, which

had been a great distress to him, was all eat up. (15)

Like Charlotte, Mr. Woodhouse redirects his emotions away from the human onto the inanimate. Austen’s continuation of this theme hints at the very real loss experienced by a family when a woman married and joined her husband’s life. “Lesley Castle” explores both sides of the situation, first with Charlotte’s expression of loss after Eloisa met and fell in love with Henry, and then later with a letter from Eloisa to Mrs. Marlowe, in which she expresses her grief at losing her sister’s affection, saying: “I once thought that to have what is in general called a Friend … independent of my Sister would never be an object of my wishes, but how much was I mistaken!” (168). Eloisa feels slighted by Charlotte, who is “too much engrossed by two confidential Correspondents of that sort, to supply the place of one to me” (168). Comically, Mrs. Marlowe responds by reassuring Eloisa that she is superior in beauty to all three of the Lesley women, while recognizing the suspicion she may raise by her compliments:

What would my Husband and Brother say of us, if they knew all the fine

things I have been saying to you in the Letter. It is very hard that a pretty

Woman is never to be told she is so by any one of her own Sex, without

that person’s being suspected to be either her determined Enemy, or her

professed Toad-eater. (171)

Here Austen derides the superficial merits of beauty, an ever-present concern for young women and a necessary requirement for a sentimental heroine. By mocking the importance of beauty in a woman, Austen brings attention to the arbitrary nature of a woman’s success based on appearances. Just as she criticized the need for women to possess innocence and softness, she likewise criticizes the necessity of beauty.

“Lesley Castle” ends abruptly with Margaret’s last letter, which wraps up the

loose ends of her family. Her father is gambling away the family fortune, while Lady

Lesley parades around in their mother’s jewels, and her brother “has since married a

Neapolitan Lady of great Rank and Fortune” (174). Louisa has also found her way to

Naples, become a Roman-Catholic, and “is soon to be married to a Neapolitan Nobleman

of great and Distinguished Merit” (174-175). Lesley and Louisa have become great

friends and “have quite forgiven all past errors and intend in future to be very good

Neighbors” (175). Margaret and Matilda have been invited to Naples for a visit and to

convey little Louisa to her parents. Unfortunately, Mr. Lesley and Lady Lesley have no

desire to go and the girls are without a proper chaperone. This bizarre turn of events

reiterates the limitations faced by the young women in Austen’s juvenilia. While the rest

of the family are free to pursue their desires, Margaret and Matilda must wait for a

suitable guardian to escort them to Naples.

Throughout “Lesley Castle” we are confronted with Spack’s assertion that the substance of these young women’s everyday lives provides little inspiration for compelling fiction. In a sense, the Lesley sisters and their counterparts, the Luttrell sisters, are prisoners in their own homes with little to entertain or inspire them. It is not surprising then that they create little dramas out of the few interactions they have with the world. Underneath the delightfully dark dramas that Austen crafts in the correspondence is a loneliness and longing for freedom, the type of freedom granted to men and taken by immoral women. This acknowledgement of the isolation of women is a critique of the sentimental novel, which reinforced the idea that a proper woman is content within the

50 confines of her home. But more importantly, it is a critique of society as a whole, in line with reformists such as Mary Wollstonecraft.

4 VOLUME THE THIRD: “EVELYN”

“Evelyn” is the first entry in Volume the Third and the last of the entries to

embody the rambunctious tone of the juvenilia. Like “Jack & Alice” and “Lesley Castle,”

“Evelyn” is a sneering commentary on the artificial representations found in sentimental

fiction. However, in “Evelyn,” Austen’s focus is not on the women in the story but on a

forgetful, self-obsessed hero. The story follows the spectacularly narcissistic Frederic

Gower on his misadventures to Sussex to procure a picture of his sister’s dead fiancé

from the young man’s noble father. Along the way, Gower becomes distracted by the village of “Evelyn,” takes possession of another man’s home, and marries the man’s daughter before recalling his original errand. Unfortunately, before Gower resumes his

travels, he learns that sister has died from worry, and he is struck down with a case of the gout. Upon recovering, Gower resumes his travels to Sussex, but it is clear the young hero’s mental acuity is in sharp decline. Austen’s hero embodies the narcissistic and overly sentimental qualities of Goethe’s hero in The Sorrows of Young Werther. As such,

“Evelyn” feels like a burlesque of the popular novel. Austen also makes numerous allusions to Sir Charles Grandison, suggesting that Gower is in part modeled after

Richardson’s hero. While Austen enjoyed both novels immensely, it appears she is relying on her audience’s familiarity with the novels to ridicule the depiction of sentimental heroes. Throughout the story, Austen also mocks the picturesque through

Gower’s incorrect applications of the aesthetic ideal. I would argue that Austen’s burlesque of both the archetypal sentimental hero and the picturesque ideal are critiques of artificial standards of masculinity and beauty found in popular eighteenth-century

novels. Furthermore, I would suggest that “Evelyn” is a critique of the treatment of

women who are forced to contort themselves to fit within the artificial parameters of the

sentimental novel, as dictated by their heroes and the contrived notions of picturesque

beauty. In this chapter, I will demonstrate how Austen burlesques the conventions of the

sentimental novel to demonstrate the dangers of excessive sensibility, specifically the

narcissistic tendencies of the sentimental hero and the limitations of contrived

perspectives. I will begin by exploring the plot of narcissism in “Evelyn,” followed by a

discussion of the picturesque and its importance in the juvenilia generally, and “Evelyn”

specifically. Along the way, I will point out allusions to popular novels and link “Evelyn” to Austen’s earlier short story, “Love and Freindship.”

Critics tend to agree that like most of the juvenilia, narcissism is at the heart of

“Evelyn.” Spacks suggests that “Evelyn” “provides an especially interesting example of the plot of narcissism because it creates a situation in which narcissism meets only the slightest obstacles,” unlike other early examples of the self-obsessed who are “brought into conjunction with one another” and must compete for supremacy (129). Halperin makes a similar argument from an opposing vantage point, suggesting that “a chief thrust of ‘Evelyn’ is its attack on misplaced or distorted benevolence, benevolence controlled by judgment – a sort of subgenre under the heading of excessive sensibility” (37). In this sense, we see the correlation between narcissism and distorted benevolence because the story cannot reach the extremes “Evelyn” reaches without a balance of the two. Spacks points out that, in “Evelyn,” the hero’s behavior “becomes ever more inappropriate” as the story progresses, and Gower’s every desire is indulged by his wife and her parents,

causing him to “believe himself a natural recipient of indulgences from all” (129).

Without the cooperation of the Webb family, the hero’s sense of entitlement would have

been contained, but because of their extreme compliancy, Gower loses his foothold in

reality and becomes incapacitated. The theme of narcissism runs throughout the juvenilia,

creating morally and mentally unbalanced characters whose failure to see the big picture

often leads to catastrophic ends. Likely, Austen was parodying the melodramatic outcomes of sentimental fiction, which would have been familiar to her audience. Spacks

suggests that Austen set out “to parody literary genres that had given her pleasure but that

seemed based on conventions grotesquely false to actual experience,” in order to offer “a

single alternative ‘truth’: most people care only about themselves” (131). While I

disagree that “Evelyn” bears this “truth” out, I would agree that Gower, acting as a

representative of his sex, fits this assertion.

It is possible that “Evelyn” was inspired by Austen’s dear friends and neighbors,

the Lloyds. The story is dedicated to Miss Mary Lloyd, from her obedient and humble

servant in 1792 (Austen, Juvenilia 229). Austen dedicated the very first entry in Volume

the First, “Frederic and Elfrida,” to Mary’s sister Martha Lloyd. Mary and Martha with

their sister Eliza and their recently widowed mother, moved into the Steventon

neighborhood in the Spring of 1789. There they rented the Deane parsonage, but in 1792

they were forced to leave when James Austen became curate at Deane. James’ acquisition

of “both Deane parsonage and his new bride, Anne Matthew” in 1792 appear to have

provided inspiration for the story of an entitled young man who displaces a family

without care or concern (Sabor 482). Austen also appears to have drawn inspiration from

Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, a story about an entitled young man who ultimately commits suicide when he is denied the woman he loves. “Evelyn” captures

Werther’s excessive sensibility, self-absorption, and limitless desires. While Austen does not make any obvious allusions to Werther in “Evelyn,” we know she was familiar with

Goethe’s epistolary novel from her reference in Letter the Twelfth of “Love and

Freindship”:

“They said he was Sensible, well-informed, and Agreeable; we did not

pretend to Judge of such trifles, but as we were convinced he had no soul,

that he had never read the Sorrows of Werther … we were certain that

Janetta could feel no affection for him, or at least that she ought to feel

none.” (122)

“Love and Freindship” appears in Volume the Second of the juvenilia and is a hysterical burlesque of the sentimental novel, in which Austen incorporates themes of deception and betrayal with melodramatic flair. Austen’s mention of Werther creates a correlation between the exaggerated sentimentality of Werther and her own heroines, Sophia and

Laura. Werther embodies the violent passions of the sentimental novel and the romantic notion of all-consuming love. The novel is referenced in Charlotte Smith’s Emmeline to illustrate the “danger of trifling with violent and incurable passions” (186). By satirically suggesting that Janetta could never have affection for a man who had not read Werther

(the handbook for sentimentality), Austen is rejecting Goethe’s model of masculine sentimentality, and by alluding to the novel in “Evelyn” she is rejecting her own hero’s

Wertheresque sentimentality.

Like Werther’s slow progression to madness, in “Evelyn” we see Gower’s

growing sense of entitlement and the consequences of his inability to see beyond his own

needs. Gower stumbles upon Evelyn while traveling on horseback through the

countryside on a chivalrous errand for his sister Rose, but he becomes distracted by the

charming village. Young Gower is so taken with the village that he inquires about a home

to let and is taken to the Webb home, where he is welcomed “to everything it contains,”

including Mrs. Webb’s purse and hundred pounds (232). Upon his entering the home,

Mrs. Webb immediately orders the servants to “Spread a Cloth” and bring Gower various

luxuries, including chocolate, a venison pastry, a basket of fruit, ices, a basin of soup,

sandwiches, jellies and cakes (232). When the food arrives, he “tastes something of all of

it and pockets the rest” before being “conducted into the dining parlor, where he eat [sic] a most excellent Dinner and partook of the most exquisite Wines, while Mr. and Mrs.

Webb stood by him still pressing him to eat and drink a little more” (233). The overabundance of luxurious food resembles the wedding feast from “Lesley Castle” and hints at an underlying hysteria in the Webb family, who attempts to feed the insatiable appetite of their guest in hopes of wooing a husband for their eldest daughter.

After Gower finishes his repast, the Webbs ask him: “What else can we do to

contribute to your happiness and express the Affection we bear you?,” to which Gower

responds, “Give me then your house and Grounds; I ask for nothing else” (233) -- except

your eldest daughter and her ten thousand pounds 1. Throughout the juvenilia, Austen

mocks popular depictions of courting and matrimony, including the ridiculous notion of

1 With ten thousand pounds, Miss Webb is one of Austen’s wealthiest female characters (Sabor 485).

love at first sight, to challenge the artificial depictions of romantic love in sentimental

novels. Additionally, she demonstrates the inequity of marriage, suggesting that women are held to a higher standard when they are evaluated as potential spouses. In “Evelyn,”

Gower is allowed to come into the Webb’s home, enjoy the best of what they have to

offer, and insult them by asking for their daughter’s hand in marriage, all without having

to prove his character or his worth. While we never learn of Gower’s social position, we

know from Rose’s situation that they are likely not an affluent family. Meanwhile, when

it is discovered that Rose and the young man (Henry) intend to marry, Henry’s father

objects and the young man is called back to Sussex from Carlisle. In this example,

Gower, who is without fortune prospers, while his sister has no chance at happiness.

For Austen, the marriage trope is also a brilliant opportunity to express her rebellious spirit. In many of the stories, the young heroes and heroines reject the advice of the parents to answer the call of their violent passions. In “Evelyn,” Rose’s young man is called back from Carlisle, which sits on the Scottish border some 350 miles from

Sussex (Sabor 486) and nine miles from Gretna Green, suggesting that Henry and Rose may have eloped. Gretna Green became a popular destination for young couples to elope after Lord Hardwicke’s Marriage Act of 1753, “which required parental consent for marriages between those under 21 did not apply to Scotland” (Sabor 438). R. W.

Chapman suggests that Austen typically uses Scotland as a polite euphemism for Gretna

Green (Bradbrook 56) and, as mentioned previously, Austen was familiar with Samuel

Johnson’s “A Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland” (1775) and Gilpin’s Tour of the Headlands (1789). In “Love and Freindship,” Janetta and M’Kenzie elope to Gretna

Green despite the fact that the story takes place in Scotland, and in Pride and Prejudice,

Lydia writes to Harriet of her plans to elope with Wickham:

My dear Harriet,

You will laugh when you know where I am gone, and I cannot help

laughing myself at your surprise to-morrow morning, as soon as I am

missed. I am going to Gretna Green, and if you cannot guess with who, I

shall think you a simpleton, for there is but one man in the world I love,

and he is an angel … You need not send them word at Longbourn of my

going, if you do not like it, for it will make the surprise the greater, when I

write to them and sign my name ‘Lydia Wickham.’ What a good joke it

will be! I can hardly write for laughing. (198)

In “Evelyn,” Henry’s decision to marry Rose despite his family’s objections

provides a particularly romantic storyline in an otherwise disagreeable narrative about her self-absorbed brother. But Rose’s story is a tragic one. Rose, “the thirteenth daughter” of a very large family, represents the fragile female as depicted in the sentimental novel.

Rose had been “engaged by the attentions and charms of a young Man whose high rank

and expectations seemed to foretell objections from his Family to a match which would

be highly desirable to theirs”(235). We therefore, we recognize Rose as a precursor to the

likes of Lucy Steele and Elizabeth Bennet, whose relative poverty make them unsuitable

for genteel marriages. Rose’s status as the thirteenth daughter suggests that she is

unlucky, and the description of the rose “full-blown lying on the gravel” paints an

arresting picture that echoes the symbolic imagery of the Gothic (235). Austen infuses

mythical and tragic elements of Gothic sentimentalism in Rose’s story to create a

prescribed version of the romantic heroine. Rose’s story is made more tragic when her

brother learns that she “has been dead these six weeks,” hastened to her Grave by her

brother’s “long absence and continued Silence” (237). Gower learns this in a letter from

one of his many sisters, and while the sister’s letter is comical in its absurdity, there is an

underlying bitterness for her brother’s freedom that harkens back to “Lesley Castle.”

Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh added an ending to the story in the juvenilia that has Gower returning home to find that Rose did not really die. This ending would capture the bitterness Austen seems to be implying, for if Rose were not dead, the assertion she was would be a particularly cruel punishment for Gower.

Gower is genuinely affected by the death of his sister and feels “obliged to attribute to his own conduct, his Sister’s death,” demonstrating a depth of character not previously hinted at (237). In fact, Gower experiences “so violent a shock to his feelings” that he was “attacked by a fit of the gout” and confined to his own room, affording his wife Maria an opportunity “of shining in that favorite character of Sir

Charles Grandison’s, a nurse” (237). This allusion to Sir Charles Grandison illustrates the expectations Gower has for his wife and provides another example of his narcissism.

The passage from Sir Charles Grandison appears in Letter XI of Volume 3, wherein

Grandison suggests to Dr. Bartlett:

You are often indisposed with the gout: … Infirmity requires indulgence:

In the very nature of the word and thing, indulgence cannot exist with

servility; between man and wife it may: The same interest unites them.

Mutual confidence! … A man gives his own consequence to the woman

he marries; and he sees himself respected in the respect paid her: She

extends his dignity and confirms it. There is such a tenderness, such an

helpfulness, such a sympathy in suffering, in a good woman, that I am

always for excusing men in years, who marry prudently; while I censure,

for the same reason, women in years. Male nurses are unnatural creatures!

(There is not such a character that can be respectable) Women’s sphere is

the house, and their shining−place the sick chamber, in which they can

exert all their amiable, and, shall I say, lenient qualities? (345)

Gower’s compliant wife, Maria, embodies the qualities described in Grandison: “No

woman could ever appear more amiable than Maria did under such circumstances, and at

last by her unremitting attentions had the pleasure of seeing him gradually recover the use

of his feet” (237). While critics suggest that Austen admired Richardson and especially enjoyed Grandison, it appears that she is using this passage to disparage Richardson’s patriarchal sentimentalism.

We see a pronounced shift in Gower’s mental acuity after he hears Rose is dead - a shift that is mirrored by the shift in tone of the story. Austen employs a Gothic backdrop to convey suspense and horror, as Gower travels across the “irregularity in the fall of the ground” and through “a profusion of old Timber” before being “struck with terror” by the “gloomy appearance of the old Castle frowning on him” (238). However, the shift in mood retains a thread of mockery, as it is revealed that Gower “was always timid in the Dark and easily terrified when alone,” but “did not want that more necessary

and more noble courage which enabled him without a Blush to enter a large party of

superior Rank” (238). Gower arrives at the castle of and gives an emotional speech to the

family of Rose’s fiancé that leaves the young man’s family convinced he has gone mad.

He abruptly leaves the castle, and once “mounted on his horse” with the “great Gates of

the Castle” shut behind him, he feels a “universal tremor throughout his whole frame”

(240). Gower is frightened by his romantic sensibilities, which feels like a warning from

Austen to be wary of excessive sentimentality. The story ends abruptly, but several blank

pages in the notebook suggest Austen was not satisfied with the ending.

Throughout “Evelyn,” Austen mocks the aesthetic ideal of the picturesque, which

was a popular backdrop for sentimental novels, including the novels of Smith and Goethe

and while Austen enjoyed nature, she was not “a romantic worshipper of nature in the

Wordsworthian manner” (Bradbrook 50). According to her brother Henry, “at a very early age [Jane] was enamored of Gilpin on the Picturesque; and she seldom changed her opinions either on books or men” (qtd. in Bradbrook 50). Gilpin suggests that

“picturesque beauty” is “that kind of beauty which would look well in a picture,” and observed that “language, like light, is a medium: and the true philosophic stile, like light from a north-window, exhibits objects clearly and distinctly, without soliciting attention to itself” (qtd. in Bradbrook 53). Gilpin stresses the “importance of balance of parts, of simplicity as opposed to too much variety, and the choice of a particular scene or leading subject, to which the parts should be subservient” (Bradbrook 54). Austen incorporates her familiarity with the theories of the picturesque in her juvenilia; however, in Austen’s hands these theories become rules to be broken. Austen experiments with parodies of the

picturesque in “Love and Freindship” and “Evelyn,” but her most successful mockery of

the subject occurs in Northanger Abbey:

But Catherine did not know her own advantages—did not know that a

good-looking girl, with an affectionate heart and a very ignorant mind,

cannot fail of attracting a clever young man, unless circumstances are

particularly untoward. In the present instance, she confessed and lamented

her want of knowledge, declared that she would give anything in the world

to be able to draw; and a lecture on the picturesque immediately followed,

in which his instructions were so clear that she soon began to see beauty in

everything admired by him, and her attention was so earnest that he

became perfectly satisfied of her having a great deal of natural taste (76).

This excerpt represents Austen’s frustration with the pretense of the picturesque and its reliance on an interpretation of the male gaze. While her mature writings offer a subtle critique, her early parodies of the picturesque blatantly ridicule the restrictive parameters ascribed to the study of beauty. In “Love and Freindship,” Austen discusses the picturesque, but in an excessively mocking tone. In one scene Sophia remarks: “‘What a beautiful sky! … How charmingly is the azure varied by those delicate streaks of white!,’” which agitates Sophia, who declares:

“Oh! my Laura (replied she hastily withdrawing her Eyes from a

momentary glance at the sky) do not thus distress me by calling my

Attention to an object which so cruelly reminds me of my Augustus's blue

satin waistcoat striped in white! In pity to your unhappy freind avoid a

subject so distressing.” (128)

In this scene Austen ridicules the sentimentality of the typical heroine in popular novels, but in “Evelyn” the picturesque is depicted as an absurd lens through which Gower navigates the world. Austen is less interested in Romantic interpretations of nature, but instead focuses on Gilpin’s irrational need to create order in nature. John Halperin suggests that Austen’s exacting landscape descriptions in the story suggest “the young writer’s amusement with some early Gothic fashions” (37), but I would argue that, in

“Evelyn,” her mockery of the picturesque and Gothic themes suggest a criticism of contrived depictions of “nature,” especially with regard to human nature.

Throughout “Evelyn,” Austen parodies the picturesque by accompanying picturesque discriptions with irrational suggestions, such as when Gower, upon surveying the grounds of his future house, pronounces his delight, describing the house as follows:

It was in the exact center of a small circular paddock, which was enclosed

by a regular paling, and bordered with a plantation of Lombardy poplars,

and Spruce firs alternately placed in three rows. A gravel walk ran

through this beautiful Shrubbery, and as the remainder of the paddock was

unencumbered with any other Timber, the surface of its perfectly even and

smooth, and grazed by four white Cows which were disposed at equal

distances from each other. (231-232)

Later in the story, as he approaches an ancient castle, he thinks it requires “the Paddock of Evelyn lodge to form a Contrast and enliven the structure” (238). In this passage,

Gower is more concerned with controlling the appearance of his surrounding than being

63 emotionally moved by the ancient forest, and what it would typically represent in a

Gothic novel. In this way, Austen is demonstrating the contrived quality of Gower’s emotional make-up, a by-product of living in a society that employs prescribed constructs for viewing the world. The entire description ridicules the picturesque by combining common elements that would have been familiar to Austen’s readers, such as a circular paddock and Lombardy poplars (Sabor 483). However, Sabor suggests that they would not have been planted around a house in a small paddock along with bushy spruce trees as this would have blocked out the light (483). Doody agrees that Austen’s use of the

Lombardy poplars in “Evelyn” are “a mockery of perfection, in which excess of fashionable vegetation and a rage for symmetry are combined” (280). Sabor further suggests that the alternately spaced Spruce firs are an allusion to Grandison Hall in

Richardson’s Grandison, in which there is an orchard bordered “with three rows of trees, at proper distances from each other; one of pines; one of cedars; and one of Scotch firs, in the like semicircular order” (qtd. in Sabor 483). However, in Grandison the placement of the trees are designed to afford “shady walks in the summer” and to “defend the orchard from the cold and blighting winds” (qtd. in Sabor 483), without obstructing the view from the house. The allusion to Grandison is echoed later in the story with an explanation of

Grandison’s expectations for a wife, suggesting Austen’s desire to tie the perfection

Grandison wants in his grounds to the perfection he expects from a wife. And yet, time and again, Austen mocks the picturesque, such as when she places four white cows in a scene (231), in defiance of Gilpin’s insistence that three is the perfect number for grouping larger cattle:

“Two will hardly combine … but with three, you are almost sure of a good

group, except indeed they all stand in the same attitude, and at equal

distances … Four introduce a new difficulty in grouping. Separate they

would have a bad effect … The only way, in which they will group well, it

to unite three.” (qtd. in Sabor 484).

Austen’s subtle, sneering rejection of picturesque principles hints at an underlying

rebellion against heavily subscribed expectations of a young woman. Additionally, by

combining Gower’s blinding narcissism with his imperfect vision of the picturesque, we

see the potential for a grotesque landscape in the wrong hands.

“Evelyn” is a brilliantly clever farce of all that is prized in the sentimental novel.

Gower, the bumbling, narcissistic, entitled hero feels like an iteration of young Werther,

but with the added element of misplaced arrogance as he attempts unsuccessfully to

employ the theory of the picturesque to his surroundings. Bradbrook suggests that

“Austen satirized the enthusiasm for the picturesque, but she also took some of its more

absurd ideas half seriously at times” (55). Understanding Austen’s appreciation for the picturesque makes Gower’s failures all the more enjoyable. Gower is never challenged by

anyone and, therefore, his ignorance is unknown to him, allowing his arrogance to

flourish. Austen, as a student of the picturesque, may have been exposed to the unchallenged ignorance and unchecked arrogance of men, as hinted at in the scene from

Northanger Abbey described above. But is Austen only mocking the picturesque, or is she making a comment on the social rules that restrict how women are to be appreciated?

The picturesque suggests eliminating anything that is not pleasing to the eye and calls for

an unnatural appreciation of nature. Likewise, we see something very unnatural in the

behavior of almost all the characters. Gower is obsessed with his own enjoyment and

wishes to remove the Webbs from their home, and later when he reaches the castle he

wishes it were surrounded by his paddock rather than the Gothic forest that frightens him.

Like the picturesque, Gower’s motivation is to remove anything displeasing from his

surroundings, regardless of the cost to others. In this way Austen links the picturesque to a form of narcissism. Additionally, by making Gower the agent of change in the story, she is commentating on the patriarchal belief that men have the authority to create the worlds in which they live, while women are meant to be obliging.

5 CONCLUSION

Throughout this paper I have illustrated the various ways in which Austen

burlesques popular novels of the eighteenth century as a way of criticizing the limiting

conventions they reinforced. As a voracious reader and a fan of popular literature, Austen

was not criticizing the novels or authors she parodied but drawing attention to the

limitations of the unnatural depictions of sentimental heroes and heroines. These stories

were also written for a very specific and intimate audience who shared her criticism of

sentimentality and knowledge of popular fiction. Hence, these early stories were an

opportunity for the young author to mount an uncensored rebellion against the tried-and

true depictions of men and women in popular fiction. Throughout the juvenilia, Austen

questions popular character archetypes, exaggerates them to ridiculous extremes, and

contrasts them against the likes of anti-heroines such as Alice and Charlotte. These anti-

heroines evolve throughout the juvenilia and become early prototypes of the heroines

found in her published novels.

While this paper is not an exhaustive study of the juvenilia, it provides samples

from each of the three notebooks. From Volume the First, I concentrated on “Jack &

Alice,” which is the most violent and blatantly satirical example analyzed in this paper.

While the story is funny on its surface, it reflects Austen’s understanding of the systemic

anxiety faced by young girls who have few options and little guidance. “Jack & Alice,”

like many of the stories in the juvenilia, also explores the complexities and dangers of

female friendships. From Volume the Second, I analyzed “Lesley Castle,” which

continues the theme of limited options for women, but from the intimate perspective of

67 female correspondence. The complexity of female relationships is delightfully depicted in this short epistolary novel, Austen making good use of the epistolary narrative to list her various complaints about the restrictions on women during the Regency period. At the heart of the story is a shared sense of isolation and depravation, which is poignantly depicted in rare flashes of vulnerability. Finally, I focused on “Evelyn,” from Volume the

Third, which depicts the dangers of narcissism and the limitations of the picturesque as an aesthetic ideal. Like “Jack & Alice” and “Lesley Castle,” “Evelyn” mocks the sentimental novel, but this time with a focus on the sentimental hero. Through her depiction the story’s self-absorbed hero, Austen radically suggests that such narcissism is dangerous to a man’s mental health, and that expectations of benevolence and acquiescence on the part of women ultimately contribute to the instability of men’s sense of reality.

Throughout the juvenilia, Austen ridicules the traditional portrayal of men and women, by providing exaggerated examples of both. In doing so, she presents an uncensored critique of the limitations of these portrayals. While Austen may have been writing for the express purpose of entertaining close friends and family, it appears that these early explorations into the limits of traditional characters was a revolution that led to the emergence of the unconventional heroines who appear in her published novels.

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